


Too Damn Old For This

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Series, Retirement, caretaker!sam, hurt!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Dean had always believed he would go out with a gun in his hand, bleeding for a righteous cause. Blaze of glory style. 'Preferably with the song playing,' Sam had once teased him. Sam had resigned himself to the same exit, even if it wasn’t his ideal ending. So long as it was by his brother’s side, it didn’t really matter anymore. But somewhere along the way, Dean had changed his mind.</em>
</p><p>An easy hunt goes a little worse than expected, and has the boys facing some hard, and maybe even long sought after, truths about their age and considering retirement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Damn Old For This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts).



> for [Lochinvar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar) who imagined the boys looking after each other in their advanced years. Thank you for your delightful little bits of inspiration. With you around, I'll never want for an idea :)))

_We’re getting too old for this_.

The thought whispered through the back of Sam’s mind as he slid another look to the passenger seat where Dean was slouched down a little, head back, eyes closed, cradling his right arm, with his left leg stretched as straight as it would go in the foot well. He was silent, breathing even, though Sam knew he wasn’t asleep. He was in pain. Sam could see it in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the pull between his brows, the way he held himself so tightly, that forced casual pose, guarding against every dip and bump in the road.

‘You doing okay?’ he asked quietly, just in case he was wrong.

Dean hummed a little in response, but said nothing and didn’t open his eyes.

It was a spirit, a goddamn vengeful spirit. Not even all that vengeful and certainly not lethal, just troublesome. The only reason they had bothered coming out here was because these sort of things, in their experience, tended to escalate. So even if it took another decade, someone would have to put the damn thing down. It might as well be them. Now. 

Only the weather had turned cold all of a sudden, and Dean’s bad knee and his lower back had been so stiff when they got up this morning that he had to sit on the edge of the bed for a full five minutes before he was certain his feet would hold him when he finally stood. Not that he said anything, or complained about it. He never did. Sam had silently handed over painkillers with his coffee and that was the end of it. Except that Sam insisted on being the one in the hole tonight because he was honestly afraid if Dean got in he wouldn’t get back out. So, Dean grudgingly sat guard duty at the top of the grave, shotgun ready, and it should have been easy, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Sometimes escalation happened slowly with spirits the longer they spent stuck between one plane and another, and sometimes it happened all at once, triggered by a particular event. Sam should have known better, the kind of luck they tended to have. Apparently all it took was opening Zefyrinia Johnson’s grave to really piss her off, and she’d vented it expertly on Dean. 

In the time it took Sam to scramble out of the grave, douse the bones in lighter fluid and salt, and get one of Dean’s Zippos struck and tossed in the hole, the spirit of Zefyrinia had tossed Dean against a tree, two gravestones, and a decorative fountain, the last of which Sam suspected was the likely culprit in dislocating his shoulder, and Sam wasn’t sure which of the gravestones to blame for Dean’s possible concussion.

 _We’re getting too_ old _for this_.

‘Still with me?’ Sam checked again softly when he heard Dean shift a little in the seat and give a breathy grunt of discomfort.

He answered this time, short and bitten with pain, but genuine Dean, ‘Quit your damn worrying, princess, and keep your eyes on the road.’

Sam huffed a strained laugh, relieved rather than irritated at his brother’s pissy-ness, and turned his eyes back front. It was when Dean got serious, got quiet, and couldn’t joke that Sam knew he needed to worry. Not that he wasn’t going to worry anyway. Dean was turning sixty in a few months, and for a hunter that was pretty damn phenomenal, though he wondered if either of them would have made it this far at all without the aid of some celestial and hell-spawn powers alike; or if Dean would be in several more pieces and a lot worse shape but for all the times Cas had put him back together again, fresh and new as the day he was born, in their younger days. 

Sam couldn’t discount his own age, either. At fifty-five, he had to admit, despite his efforts at maintaining some semblance of a regular diet and exercise in their preposterously irregular lives, he didn’t have the energy he used to. It wasn’t with nearly the same careless ease that he packed up his duffle on the spur of the moment for another trip cross country. His knees protested more often and sooner at being cooped in the shotgun seat for hours on end, and the small of his back, where the knot of scar tissue that for some reason had never gone away despite his numerous resurrections, ached whenever it was going to rain.

‘We’re getting too damn old for this.’

‘Hmmm?’

Sam twitched, realizing only at Dean’s distracted hum that he had spoken out loud. He remained silent and steered the Impala conscientiously over the speed bumps in their motel parking lot. When he cut the engine, Dean roused himself in the seat, straightening up with a groan.

‘Just. Stay put,’ Sam commanded, shooting out a hand to press Dean back in the seat.

Dean grumbled inarticulately under his breath but was still in the seat with the door shut when Sam rounded to his side of the car. He swung the door wide and ignored Dean’s continued grousing and swearing as he worked an arm carefully around Dean’s back and lifted him out of the seat with as little jostling to his out of joint shoulder as was possible.

‘I’m not broke, Sammy,’ Dean snapped when Sam kept a tight hold on him even once he was standing on his own feet and guided him toward the room.

But it was the pain talking, and Sam knew it. ‘Shut up,'  he said lightly, without any heat to back it up. He kicked their room door closed and balanced Dean against the tall bureau near the bathroom while he quickly shed his jacket and then gingerly worked Dean loose of his own and tossed them both on the bed. 

‘Shoulder first?’ Sam asked, feeling gently through skin and muscle to find the bone out of its socket as he had suspected.

Tight lipped and breathing harshly at the pain Sam’s investigative fingers incited, Dean nodded sharply. ‘Yup.’ He turned to face the bureau and braced himself with his good arm. 

‘On three,’ Sam said, and carefully positioned his hands around the injured joint, bracing his own feet firmly on the floor and shifting his weight forward. Dean nodded again.

He knew it was coming on ‘one.’ They both did. It was how dad had done it decades ago, and how they had done it ever since. No point in prolonging the wait. But it still nearly bent Dean double, and his knees buckled on him. Sam grabbed him around the waist and hauled him back to sit on the bed.

‘Hey, hey,’ Sam hunkered down in front of him. ‘Easy.’

‘Sonofa _bitch_!’ Dean swore loudly, cradling the offending limb. He was pale and sweating and for a second Sam thought he might pass out completely. 

‘Dean?’

Dean breathed in deep. Once. Twice. Let it out slow, and then opened his eyes. ‘Yeah. ‘M good.’

‘I don’t know if I’d go that far,’ Sam quipped, trying to lighten the mood. Dean glared at him. Sam patted the air between them, palms down, and tried out a wan smile. 'Relax. Let me take a look at you—' Sam shifted forward to his knees, wincing at the lack of padding under the carpet, and lifted up to turn on the bedside lamp and take a closer look at his brother's injuries. 'Jesus Christ, Dean…!'

'What?'

'You're bleeding like a leaky faucet back here,' Sam said gruffly as he eased his fingers up into Dean's hair to carefully feel for the wound at the back of his skull that had soaked the collar of his shirt in blood which Sam had failed to notice in the dark of the graveyard. 'Why the hell didn't you say something?'

'Wondered why my head hurt so bad,' Dean mumbled, submitting to Sam's questing fingers with a hiss of pain and clenched teeth. 

'I think you're going to need at least a couple of stitches in this,' Sam said absently, leaning them both closer to lamp, so he could see.

'You shave my hair, I'm shavin' somethin' else on you,' Dean growled.

Sam snickered, but said, 'I think I can manage without any shaving. It'll only take two or three. As long as we clean it good…'

Sam hefted himself off the floor and went back out to the Impala to retrieve their med-kit, which had graduated over the last few years beyond dental floss, cheap whiskey, and black-market painkillers to include actual disinfectant, antibacterial gel, burn cream, and a few niceties like chemical heat and cold packs, and a couple of tubes of IcyHot that Dean made fun of him for adding, but that Sam had somehow had to replace more frequently than the rest of their medical supplies even though he rarely used it himself. Collectively, what used to fill a kit the size of a shaving bag, now took up every inch of a small duffle.

'We are getting old.' 

Sam sighed, slammed the trunk, and went back inside.

Dean was where Sam had left him but leaning forward, grimacing, trying to brace himself on his knee and keep his arm immobilized at the same time. Sam dropped the bag at Dean's feet and fished out a couple of large, extra-wide rolls of Ace bandage and then carefully worked Dean out of his shirt, so he could wrap his arm and shoulder. Dean made grabby hands in the direction of the bag, and Sam sighed, smiled a little. Just because they _had_ rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide now, didn't mean there wasn't still cheap whiskey on hand. 

He handed the bottle over, and then turned one of the dinette chairs around backwards and put a couple of pillows against its back. 'Here. Come sit, so I can see what I'm doing, and you don't fall asleep and tip over.'

Dean scowled at him hard but came over to the table anyway and straddled the chair, leaning into the pillows with a stifled sigh. He let Sam bind up his arm and then leaned with his elbow across the top rung, taking occasional swigs from the bottle in his hand while Sam rinsed the blood from his hair with warm water and alcohol and then peered through a pair of 3x reading glasses to thread the suture needle. He rolled his eyes back at Sam and the corner of his mouth hitched up.

'Mr. Law Professor.'

Sam paused. 'Huh?'

Dean shook his head minutely, flinching as it rocked his brain inside his skull and caused a momentary pounding behind his right eye. 'All handsome and bookish with your glasses and suit.'

Sam frowned. 'You either hit your head harder than I thought, or you're drunk already. Dean, I'm covered in grave dirt and smell like earth worms. What are you talking about a 'suit'?

'No, I know that!' Dean made to take another drink, but decided against it, let the bottle hang loose in his hand over the back of the chair. 'But when you do—dress up in a suit—you look all handsome. In your glasses. And stuff.'

Sam felt himself blushing despite the ridiculousness of the situation. 'All right. You've had enough. You're drunk.' He reached for the bottle.

''M not,' Dean insisted, but handed over the bottle nonetheless.

And he was right, he wasn't drunk. Sam could see it in the way his eyes were still sharp and tracked Sam without thinking as he moved to a better position to stitch the gash in Dean's head. He made the stitches quickly and precisely and Dean didn't so much as twitch when he snipped off the last thread, but his hand came up to grip Sam's wrist before he could pull away.

'Dean?' Sam froze with the needle held up between them, and Dean pulled him a step closer. ‘Dean, you all right?’

Dean nodded, eyes on the needle. He pushed Sam’s hand toward the table but didn’t let go of it, and Sam dropped the needle beside the small pile of used alcohol swabs. Dean drew his hand back, curled Sam’s fingers in to hold them in the warm shell of his palm and brought it to his lips, kissed the inside of Sam’s wrist, the base of his thumb, brushed across his upturned knuckles.

‘You’re right, Sam,’ he said quietly, turning his gaze up from under his lashes, and Sam thought he saw a glimmer of fear there. ‘I don’t wanna—.’

He cut himself off, but Sam didn’t need him to finish. He stepped further into Dean’s space, pulled his arm around his waist, and then circled Dean’s shoulders—carefully—with his arms, held him close, stroked his back. He bent his head to rest his cheek against the top of Dean’s head. His hair had long since gone salt and pepper grey, but it was still thick and soft. 

‘I know,’ Sam whispered. ‘I know.’

Dean had always believed he would go out with a gun in his hand, bleeding for a righteous cause. Blaze of glory style. 'Preferably with the song playing,' Sam had once teased him. Sam had resigned himself to the same exit, even if it wasn’t his ideal ending. So long as it was by his brother’s side, it didn’t really matter anymore. But somewhere along the way, Dean had changed his mind. Sam could see it in that little ember of fear banked deep in the moss green of his eyes, could feel it in the way Dean’s fingers curled in and gripped the back of Sam’s shirt, like he was trying to hold one or both of them still against the current of time. 

‘C’mon,’ Sam coaxed gently, helping Dean to stand. He carefully stripped him of his jeans, so he could check him over for other wounds, and found himself on one knee, staring upward, captivated—like the besotted teenager he once had been—by the beauty of the man standing above him. 

For all his sixty years and the amassed collection of scars he’d acquired since the day Cas had resumed his rightful place in heaven before the gates were closed and man was left to his own devices, unhindered by the meddlesome powers of his celestial brethren, Dean was still an amazing specimen of virility. Perhaps his muscle tone had softened a bit with age, but certainly not infirmity. His love of fast food and beer may have conspired with gravity in the last decade or so to give him a little extra layer of pudge around the middle, but it just gave Sam more to hold when the nights in the bunker got too cold. His jaw was still strong and straight, not a hit of jowliness about it. His stubble had greyed with his hair and he kept a beard these days, trimmed close, which gave him a slightly wild, untamed look that drove Sam to distraction. 

‘Sam?’

Dean was looking down, concerned, but Sam just looked back, gave a tiny shake of his head and smiled because there weren’t words for how he felt right now, kneeling at his brother’s feet, remembering how this body he so worshipped had broken itself again and again on his behalf, standing between him and danger, even between him and death. He curved his palms around Dean’s calves, smoothed them upward, thumbs trailing along the ever so slightly bowed bone of his shins, marveling at the softness of fine hairs against his palms and fingertips. Above him, Dean made a sound, something that wanted to be desire but was too tired and in too much pain. 

‘It’s okay,’ Sam said, and splayed his hands wide across Dean’s thighs, taking note of a large, purpling bruise on his left leg under the hem of his boxers. ‘Sit down.’

He held onto Dean’s hips as he lowered himself to the bed, slightly off balance from the knock to the head, the alcohol, and his bound up arm. He grabbed pillows and settled Dean back into a little nest against the headboard, then went for the tube of liniment. Dean stifled a decidedly pleasurable moan as Sam gently rubbed the cream over and around the bruise, working up so far as Dean’s hip and digging his thumbs in against the bone, eliciting another moan from his brother.

He kept it up for a good twenty minutes, working his fingers along muscle and bone, digging out kinks and knots, and massaging sore, tired joints, until Dean stirred and reached for his hands.

‘Sammy, stop. You’ll feel it in the morning.’

‘So will you,’ Sam said, shaking his head, but he complied, capping the tube and setting it on the table, because Dean was right. Sam was honestly surprised the arthritis in his thumbs wasn’t already acting up.

‘Get off your damn knees,’ Dean grumbled. ‘I’m not carrying your ass to the car in the morning.’

Sam snorted. ‘No, you won’t. ‘Cause I’ll be carrying you.’

Dean cracked an eye to glare at him and scoffed, but Sam just smiled wider and levered himself off the floor. ‘I’m gonna take a shower. You need anything?’

‘Nah.’ Dean shifted a little and settled deeper in the pillows. Sam pushed another up under his injured shoulder and pulled the blanket over his bare legs.

‘TV?’

‘Too tired,’ Dean mumbled, already drifting toward sleep.

‘I hear that,’ Sam said softly, yawning hugely as he stripped out of his shirt and went into the bathroom.

It was a quick shower. A good scrub down and a rinse to get off the leftover grave dirt and fine coating of ash. He leaned into the mirror for half a minute to finger-comb his damp hair back from his face. He kept it shorter these days, curling just around the bottom of his ears. It was greying at the temples, but still held most of its original brown. He swore it was receding further up his already high forehead, but Dean always insisted otherwise after running his fingers though it just to be sure. His face was long and thin, cheekbones more prominent than they had ever been. 

He'd never been able to get back to his fighting weight after the Trials and then worrying about Dean and the Mark. It was like his body was broken on some very basic level and refused to heal itself completely despite Gadreel's misguided efforts and Cas' repeated attempts. Sam was mostly healthy, but he had no delusions that there was permanent damage that would probably see him on a hunter's pyre long before Dean. His heart wasn't as strong as it used to be, not it the ways that counted, not in the ways that would keep it beating. He knew it. Dean knew it. Dean knew that he knew it, and tried valiantly every damn day to keep the fear of it out of his eyes. Except nights like tonight. Nights like these tended to bring it out of hiding, and he'd seen it earlier in his brother's unguarded gaze.

Sam sighed and tossed his towel over the shower rod, pulled on a fresh pair of boxers and went back out into the room where Dean was snoring lightly, intermittently, and slowly slumping to one side against the pillows. Sam fluffed the pillows, manhandled Dean gently into a better position, then flipped off the light and crawled up the bed beside him. He slid under the covers, folded up the one remaining pillow under his head, and pushed one arm behind the pillows at Dean's back while he settled the other possessively around his waist. He closed his eyes and focused on the sound of Dean's steady breathing.

'We _are_ gettin' too old, aren't we, Sammy?'

'Thought you were sleeping,' Sam evaded, settling a little closer into Dean's side.

'Or, at least, I am,' Dean continued, not to be sidetracked. Sam was quiet for a long minute. 'Sammy?'

'Maybe,' he admitted finally. 

'Think maybe it's time?' Dean asked after another stretch of silence.

'Time?'

'To finally retire.' Dean shifted down the pillows until he could get his arm around Sam and pull him over, half on top of his chest, ignoring the pain the jostling caused his shoulder. 'The whole 'goin' down in a blaze of glory' thing is kinda dramatic, you know? Looks better on younger men.' He paused, tightening his arm around Sam. 'Me? I think I'm okay with just dyin' quiet, in my sleep, now. Right next to you.'

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed a couple of times, took a steadying breath, but it didn't help the quaver in his voice when he whispered, 'Man, I'm gonna start crying, and I am _not_ taking the blame for it. Just. Stop talking and go to sleep.'

Dean was quiet for a while, and Sam thought he might have actually drifted off again.

'I wanna find a place, Sam.'

'We have a place, Dean,' Sam replied, tiredly. 'It's called the bunker. Go to sleep.'

'No, Sam. I mean, I want us to _retire_.'

Sam looked up towards Dean's face in the dark and even with only the wan light of the moon outside, he could see the solemn, determined look in his brother's eyes.

'You mean…for good?' Sam said, stumbling. 'No more monsters. No more hunts. Not at all?'

'Nope. No more,' Dean answered. 'You deserve a home, Sam. A real home. With Shakespeare and—and Odysseus on the shelves instead of spell books and grimoires.'

Sam huffed a laugh. 'Odysseus was the character _in_ the Odyssey, Dean. Homer was the author.'

'Whatever. You know what I'm gettin at.'

'Yeah. Yeah, I-I do.' Sam nodded against Dean's chest, still stunned. 'But, Dean, you don't have to do this. I mean, the bunker's your home—'

'That's just it, Sam. It's _my_ home, but you've never seen it that way, and I…' Dean paused again, and Sam could almost hear him weighing his words in the dark. He nestled closer to the strong beat of his brother's heart and waited. 'I want time, Sam. I want time with you. Away from all this.'

'But _this_ is us,' Sam said cautiously, willing Dean to contradict him.

'No, Sam. I know I've said that—a thousand times—in the past, but it's not us. We're more than this. Or we could be.'

The last came out a little like a question, like there was still a doubt in Dean's mind that he had anything in his blood besides hunting, like if he left it he was afraid he might just dissolve and disappear like a spirit put to rest. Sam wiggled closer, slung a leg up and wedged his knee between Dean's, tucked his cold toes under Dean's calf. Dean shivered.

'You damn octopus…your feet are freezing.'

Sam just smiled and pressed a kiss to Dean's chest, then pressed his ear close again and counted the steady heartbeats. 'We will be, Dean. And, yeah…yeah, I'd like that a lot. Just a little place somewhere. Maybe by a lake. You could fish.'

Dean nodded, and Sam could almost feel the tension leeching out of his brother's muscles as sleep finally started to steal him, but before he gave in, he said sleepily,

'Whatever floats your boat, man. Don't really care…'s long as it's with you.'

'Yeah,' Sam agreed softly, ducking his head down to hide his tears even though Dean wasn't awake to see them. 'Yes. That's all that matters.'

Dean hummed a little, shifted closer to Sam, and mumbled, 'Love you…Sammy.'

'I love you, too, Dean.' Sam bit down on his lip, breathed in slowly through his nose to stifle the sudden sob pushing up out of his chest, not sure what to do with the tangled ache of happy sadness settling inside him. 'Thank you,' he murmured. 

'Never have to…thank me…Sammy.' Dean rolled toward Sam in his sleep, tangling their legs together. 'Never.'

Sam smiled, closed his eyes, and slept.


End file.
